Analyse du Fédéralisme canadien d’une perspective politologique

Abstract

Two traditions of federalism have been developed in Canada: one essentially based on a mononational/territorial focus, and another based on a plurinational understanding of the politeya. Both sides have been said to undermine each other’s legitimacy, to the respective advantage of integrationist/centralist Canadians on the one hand and, on the other, of separatist/sovereignist Quebecers. The literature on Canadian federalism has, often times, ignored scholarly works done by Quebec experts on the subject. As a result, it is largely made of a body of literature that has been produced by English-speaking Canadians for Englishspeaking Canadians. It comes as no surprise, then, that Quebec specialists’ understandings of federalism are largely neglected, when not simply ignored, in most textbooks pertaining to Canadian federalism. For Quebec specialists of federalism, one way to correct this tendency has been to mine the field of comparative federalism to better contextualize their own works and to give added depth to their research. As their works have acquired recognition at the international level, so has their impact started to be felt in Canada.